Buttercup squash

I make compost from food scraps using Bokashi. Usually you use a large black compost bin to make compost at home, but, with Bokashi, you only need a two-layered bucket system as small as ordinary plastic buckets.

One day I found some spouts shooting up from the soil, underneath which I had buried Bokashi compost for fermentation. At first I didn't know what they were but about a week later I realised that they were buttercup squash.

As I had never grown buttercup in my garden, I decided to wait and see how they grew. Before long, some yellow flowers began to bloom, but I still didn't know what to do, so I again decided just to wait and see. Several days later I found a flower with round ball-shaped bottom, which I reckoned a female flower. Remembering that we failed to grow watermelon a couple of years ago, I quickly pollinated it using a brush.

The pollinated flower shrank and fell soon. But, the round bottom of the flower grew bigger and came to look like a squash.


Baby squash - 5 January

The baby squash kept growing until it became about 10cm in diameter. Although I hoped it would keep growing, it didn't, so I finally decided to harvest it.

Voila!!


My first squash - 17 February